Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Theatre Eating

Wow, everyone's blogs are full of lovely Thanksgiving recipes. I'm currently craving things related to cranberry and turkey! Thankfully, Olives, my favourite deli in Oxford, had a Thanksgiving special yesterday: turkey, cranberry, brie, stuffing and rocket. It was quite good, but I wasn't convinced about the stuffing. Or the turkey. Next time, I may just get brie and cranberry, which I think is an awesome combination (see M & S brie and cranberry parcels for further details!).

Last week was a week full of sandwiches and eating out, in fact, as I was stage managing West Side Story at the Oxford Playhouse. It was a great show, but as usual, left me completely exhausted, and with zero chance for cooking. In fact, pretty much every meal last week was in a restaurant, or some kind of take away.

I had at least three different baguettes, the winner probably being tuna with sundried tomatoes, tomato chutney, rocket and roasted vegetables. I had soup, I had pizza, I had bad pub food, I had meals that weren't really meals but snacks when I could fit them in, or were purely made up of biscuits and sweets (cookies and candy if you prefer!) and I had meals that I can't even remember.

I had great Chinese food at Sojo which Giles Coren adores. The boy and I shared a beef and aubergine dish, a spicy prawn dish, some duck and egg fried rice. It was good - but not cheap.

I had a great sag paneer at Chutneys where we all ordered more food than we needed to make sure we got free poppadoms!

On Friday night I went home for part one of mum's 50th birthday, and had more Chinese food. But this was Chinese for 25 members of my family - including lots of very hungry teenage (or grown up) boys. There was more food than you can imagine, a whole table groaning with it. And I loved being able to sit down and relax during a meal! Plus, the boy survived the introduction.

On Sunday I went back for part 2, a catered brunch, entirely made up of canapes. The food was amazing:Shots of fresh orange juiceShots of smoothieTiny expresso cups of porridgeTiny cocktail glasses of granola and yogurtWelsh rarebitBlintzesFritattaBagelsQuails eggs on toastKedgereeCroissantsLemon cakeMuffins

Lovely. But this week I've been cooking finally. More on that to come...